Kyzu and Lynne
by PolarBearMagus
Summary: Set circa 300 years after the war. You'll just have to read to find out!
1. Chapter 1

Lynne swept into the entrance hall. She loved the slight rustle of her gray and blue kimono as she crossed the room. She smiled at those she knew, and nodded at those she had only heard of.

"Lynne!" called one of her friends. She made her way over, and fluttered her fan in front of her face.

"What do you think?" she asked.

Her friend sighed. "Why do you insist on covering up your tattoos? They're so beautiful!" Lynne instinctively tugged her sleeves lower until only the tips of her airbending arrows showed.

"So what's the latest gossip?" Lynne asked.

Her friend sighed again. Lynne stifled a giggle. She liked to be melodramatic, wearing black all the time and such. She might not be a bender herself, but the two were great friends.

"The Bei Fong boy is taken," she told Lynne, "he finally got engaged."

"To _who_?" Lynne asked, genuinely surprised.

"I never met her before," but she subtly pointed her out amongst the crowd. She went through the entire list of gossip and rumors, before she finally remembered a real nugget. "Oh, here's something that should interest you," she said. "The Avatar is coming. And don't even start with your 'I'm related to the great Avatar Aang' spiel."

"Here?" Lynne asked, still stuck on the previous sentence. "Tonight?"

Her friend laughed. "Of course, tonight. He's been making his rounds. Now he's at Ba Sing Se. Oh no!" She was staring across the room. "Ugh! The old wolfbats will _not_ leave me alone! I have to go," she said, "but I'll talk to you later." And she went over to where a crowd of older women were discussing who should marry who. It seemed Lynne's friend was their main subject.

Lynne self-consciously tugged her sleeves again, and wandered off to visit her other friends.

--one hour later—

Kyzu was waiting outside. And he was getting impatient.

"For the last time," the guard said. "No invitation. No entry."

"But I. Am. The. Avatar," he explained yet again. What did he have to do, call on the power of his thousands of past lives to prove it?

"Yes, but if you don't have an invitation –"

"Avatar Kyzu!" called a voice from the great doorway. The guard spun around, then quickly bowed. The Earth King stepped out into the street. "It is good to see you again," he said, giving his own, though more shallow, bow to Kyzu.

"Your Majesty," Kyzu said, inclining his head.

"Come in, I'm sure you are hungry after your travels." He waved the guard back to his duties and led Kyzu into the ballroom. "I apologize. But I cannot fault him for taking his job so seriously."

"I accept your apology, Your Majesty," said Kyzu. "I am just glad to be out of the cold." They both laughed. The mild weather of Ba Sing Se was hardly a problem for a born firebender.

"I would love to talk with you, Avatar Kyzu, but I must attend to my other guests, or they'll feel neglected. Good night."

"Good night, Your Majesty." The Earth King began his rounds, and Kyzu surveyed the ballroom. He attracted the gaze of most of its members, but he merely smiled and headed for the banquet table. He wasn't comfortable with his red robes, they were too bright for his taste, but he felt everyone should remember his nation of birth.

He shook his head slightly and poured himself a drink. When he turned around again, his eyes were instantly caught by a young lady in a blue and gray kimono, only a few feet away. She was fluttering her fan in front of her face, so he could only see her light gray eyes. Tendrils of her hair had come loose, and curled across her shoulder, as if they had been placed there on purpose. What gave him a start was the blue arrow tattoos on her arm where the sleeve had slipped down, but she quickly tugged them into place.

He had never seen her before in his life. But he knew her.


	2. Chapter 2

--Lynne—

Lynne's friend had returned, but Lynne wasn't focused on the conversation. She kept glancing at a young man in red robes by the banquet table. She tapped her friend gently on the arm. "Who is that man that keeps staring at me?" she whispered under the talk of the room.

"I don't know," she decided after observing him for a few minutes. "I've never seen him before. Go talk to him!"

"What?" Lynne pulled her sleeves up again. Why were these cursed things so loose?

"Go on!" Her friend subtly nudged her forward, and Lynne suddenly found herself half way across the room with no idea how she had gotten there. She took a deep meditative breath and changed direction slightly so as to come to the table a little further down.

"Good evening," he said pleasantly.

"Good evening," she returned, picking up the ladle to pour herself a drink. But her hands were shaking so badly she only got a few drops in her glass.

"Allow me," he said. He took the ladle and filled her cup himself.

"Thank you," she mumbled, and took a sip. Her breath hitched, something it hadn't done since she'd mastered airbending, and she began coughing.

He frowned, but with a wave of his hand, he pulled the water out of her airway and into an empty glass. "Sorry," she said, but he shook his head.

"It was nothing."

Neither of them said anything.

"Is it always so hot in these rooms?" he asked, trying to find some sort of conversation before she fled his presence.

"Oh yes, summer parties are the worst. We usually have them outside."

"I always preferred garden parties."

"Me too."

"I'm Lynne."

"I'm Kyzu."

They blushed. "You go ahead," he said, gesturing for her to continue, but her eyes had widened.

"Kyzu? Not Avatar Kyzu, surely!"

"Guilty," he said, ducking his head. "And your name is?"

"By the trade winds," she said, not paying the least attention. "You're not old at all!"

"Thank you?" he said, confused.

Instantly, her fan popped open to cover her face, and her eyes became guarded.

"Oh no!" he said. "Don't do that, we were starting to have such a nice talk. Please, don't change your behavior toward me."

Lynne stopped fluttering her fan so wildly as she thought this over.

Kyzu tried to think of something to say to fix things. But he could only come up with one thing. "Would you like to dance?" he said in a rush, then hoped she didn't think him too forward.

She hesitated. "I'm Lynne," she said with a smile.

--Kyzu—

Several hours later, after a quick word with a key servant, Kyzu had arranged for Lynne to sit by him near the head of the dinner table. She seemed uncomfortable to be sitting so close to the Earth King and the Avatar, but she was handling it well.

Kyzu prided himself that he was able to monopolize her conversation, making sure she never said more than necessary to the other people around her. He thought he could detect a special shine in her eyes when she talked to him, and he had to constantly remind himself that the Earth King's table was not the place to start flying around and bending impressively. He was so intent on Lynne's reaction to his joke that he nearly missed what the Earth King said.

"Kyzu, do you think it possible that the Avatar is not the only one to undergo reincarnation?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. None of the past lives he had contacted had hinted at any such possibility.

The Earth King waved to two men across from Kyzu. "There have been several new theories concerning the reincarnation of other people, from the commonest potter to the wealthiest emperor."

"Indeed," said the man on the left. "We're working on an idea about bending. Take a single spirit, like this girl's," he gestured to Lynne, who hurriedly tugged at her sleeves to hide her tattoos, but you could still see the tip of the arrow on her forehead, "an Airbender. When she dies, the spirit will move on, following the Avatar cycle, so it will be reborn as a Waterbender. But it is an airbending spirit, so while it is in the Water Tribe, it will not be able to bend. Same with Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. When it finally reenters the Air Nomad culture, the spirit can bend again."

"Fascinating," Kyzu allowed, but he was more focused on how the speech had made Lynne draw into herself like a hermit crab.

"And there's another theory that might interest you," the man on the right said. "We've been looking through ancient texts and found several passages which allude to a matching spirit to the Avatar."

"What?" Kyzu asked. "Matching spirit? Like yin and yang, complementing each other?"

"Precisely," said the first man. "We've taken to calling it the Consort. At the most basic level, it is born into the nation of the opposite element that the Avatar is born into. The Avatar and the Consort usually find a way to meet, and may or may not marry, depending on the circumstances."

"Circumstances?" asked the Earth King. He looked mildly amused for some reason.

"Well, for example, Avatar Aang didn't have a chance to find his Consort before he became trapped in the iceberg. A hundred years of war passed. The Consort was probably killed at least once during that time. They could hardly get married, now, could they?"

"So, my Consort would be from the Water Tribe?" Kyzu asked.

"Um, we're not sure," the second man confessed. "Because of Avatar Aang's hundred-year imprisonment, it threw the cycle off, though we're not sure by how much."

"Or if there's any substance to this theory at all?"

"Historical evidence – "

"- Can be misleading," the Earth King finished. "If any of you have bothered to read Firelord Sozin's memoirs…" he looked around at his audience, but everyone except Kyzu shook their head, "you would think that he had summoned the comet, then rode it into battle and used it's very fire to smite his enemies. Now, I wouldn't place a copper's worth of value on that account except to tell me that the comet and the Fire Nation victory were connected in some way. The same can be said of many a historical text."

A ceramic clink caught Kyzu's attention. Lynne was pushing her food around her plate, and her spoon had dropped on the plate. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I just…need to get some air," she said, avoiding his gaze. "Excuse me, Your Majesty," she said. The Earth King nodded, and a servant jumped forward to pull her chair out for her. Kyzu watched as she swept across the room toward a courtyard. She didn't look back. At least, not until she had reached the doorway. And then she was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

--Lynne—

Lynne trailed her hand through the fountain as she tried to compose her thoughts. What were the odds that…oh forget it…

"The trouble with these parties," said a voice behind her. She slowly withdrew her hand from the fountain. "Is that they are several hours too long." Kyzu joined her at the fountain. "But for once I wish it was several hours longer."

She tugged at her sleeves.

"Stop that," he said, and tried to reach for her hands, but she twisted out of the way. "What's wrong with the tattoos?"

She shook her head. "You wouldn't understand."

"I hate it when people say that. Why don't you just try me?"

"You don't –" she started, then glared at the entrance to the hall. "None of the other cultures force their benders to mark themselves. I can't hide, from anyone. I'm always the example, because people see my arrows and instantly know I'm a bender."

He hesitated. "I thought you'd be proud of that."

"I iam/i! I just don't want to parade the fact everywhere I go! You – none of the Avatars have to be tattooed after mastering airbending, just those born into the Nomads. Why can't the rest of us have that option? Did you know that some towns are so scared from the War, even three hundred years later, that they will ikill/i any benders they can find? I can't enter those towns for fear of being attacked, because my tattoos mark me when other benders can hide and go free!"

"A town attacked you?"

"Yes!" And she couldn't help the tears that started running down her face. "So don't tell me that I shouldn't cover up my airbending tattoos. Don't tell me – that…" she stopped talking as she noticed that Kyzu was waterbending her tears into the fountain.

Lynne sniffed, then laughed. Maybe the odds were in her favor after all…

Several days later

Lynne ran down the last side street, and plowed into Kyzu, nearly sending them both into the fountain.

"You're late," he said as they balanced themselves.

"Sorry, I got held up at –" He kissed her.

"Does it look like I care?"

"Yes," she managed to say with a grin before he kissed her again.

"I love you, Katara."

Her blood froze. "What?" she asked, pushing him away.

"I don't know where that came from," he apologized.

"My name is iLynne/i," she reminded him, her voice dangerously low. The wind in the square began to pick up.

"Yeah, so why - "

"Who is Katara?" she asked, and he definitely couldn't ignore the wind anymore. He stabilized himself by rooting his feet to the ground with earthbending. "How many girls am I competing with?"

She couldn't see. She didn't know if it was because her hair was getting thrown into her face, or if the wind was making her eyes water, or if she was just crying.

"Lynne, I don't know who – " he shouted, but the wind was making it impossible for her to hear him. He could hear her perfectly though.

"Just stay away from me," she screamed. "I never want to see you again!" And then she was gone.

--Kyzu—

His preparations complete, Kyzu sat down in the middle of the room, hands folded. He needed answers and he needed them now. The four elements were represented with a box to his right, a bowl of water behind him, an obsidian rock on his left, and a burning candle in front of him. He focused on the flame as it wavered in the otherwise dark room and tried to think of nothing. He took a deep breath –

- and found himself before a strange house. He'd never seen the house before, but he knew where he was: the spirit world.

He walked up to the door of the drab wooden house, stepped inside, and stood face-to-face with himself. Startled, he jumped back, and so did his reflection. For that's what it was, he realized as he took in the rest. The walls were made up of mirrors, and the free-standing ones could swivel in place. He stepped into the middle of the room and was surrounded by Kyzus.

"Who is Katara?" he asked his reflections. They faded away, but a small child in orange and yellow appeared in one of the mirrors. He held a staff loosely in both hands as he meditated, and there was a blue arrow on his bald head.

"Avatar Aang?" Kyzu asked, though he knew that's who it was. He wondered why this past life of his chose to appear as his 12-year-old self instead of the all-powerful Avatar he would become.

Aang opened his eyes and glared at Kyzu. "You're not that iwaterbender/i," he said, making "waterbender" sound like a curse word. "Why isn't the Avatar before you helping you?"

"I don't know," he said, but suddenly two other Avatars appeared in mirrors to his right, a Water Tribe woman and an Earth Kingdom man.

"You're the best one to answer his question, Aang," they said in unison.

"Roku!" Aang shouted, leaping to his feet, and an old Fire Nation man appeared on Kyzu's left.

"They deferred to iyou/i, Aang. You have to help him."

Aang's eyes and tattoos glowed, and Kyzu felt…isomething/i being pulled from him, and it took him a second to realize that Aang was drawing on the powers of the other Avatars. Then the other Avatars' eyes began to glow, and Kyzu felt the flow of his power shift toward Roku. A freezing wind storm raged around the house, shaking the mirrors, and Kyzu closed his eyes tightly against the battle as he tried to find the strength to remain standing. Is this how past lives felt when he drew on them?

Then Aang wilted. Roku and the others had vanished, and Kyzu felt the warmth returning to the room and to his own body. He wondered if his past lives ever minded when he drew on their power to enter the Avatar State.

Aang looked up at him, eyes narrowed.

Suddenly, a pain erupted in his chest, so intense that he wanted to rip his heart out.

The pain was gone as quickly as it had come. "Multiply that by a thousand," Aang told him from the mirror, "and you won't even come iclose/i to what I felt when I lost Katara."

Kyzu understood. "She was your consort."

"I loved her," he said quietly. "And I couldn't save her. I was visiting Kyoshi Island when she got a message from Fire Lord Zuko about a rebellion. She went to help. By the time I got there, she was dead. I…I destroyed them." His gaze was hollow as he met Kyzu's eyes.

"But why did I call Lynne Katara?" Kyzu asked.

"The Avatar and the consort have been separated for 300 years," said Kyzu's own mentor, the Earth Kingdom man, who reappeared in his mirror. "Mine was a firebender. My village, which is very traditional, killed her before she could reach me."

"I was engaged," said the Water Tribe woman. "I could hardly explain to my father the wrongness of the situation when I didn't understand myself."

"Combined with my hundred years in an iceberg," said Aang, "that's 400 years of separatioin, with a small respite when I had Katara."

"Actually, I think I met my consort," the woman said. "We had a feast to celebrate…something, I don't remember what, and this young man was there. He was funny, charming, but slightly conceited, but that just added to his charm."

"That sounds like Sokka," said Aang at the same time as Kyzu and the Earthbender chimed in with the same response, but different names. Aang laughed at Kyzu's confusion. "Sokka's the only spirit I know that can't bend in iany/i culture. He likes to haunt the North Pole, and his personality doesn't change from life to life."

"You shouldn't talk about people behind their backs, Kyzu," said a voice behind Kyzu. He turned to find one of his friends from the Dai Li occupying the swivel mirror which was spinning so fast it was a blur.

Before he could say anything, Aang said, "Sokka, what are you doing here? This building is for the Avatar only."

"Sokka?" asked Kyzu. He squinted. Through the blur he could just make out other forms.

"I hate that mirror," his mentor said. "I never got used to it. It shows a spirit in the manifestation a particular Avatar is familiar with. I see my friend, Aang sees his, I'm assuming you see yours, and so on." Kyzu shook his head. The Spirit World would never cease to amaze him. He turned back to the mirrors, where his friend, or Sokka, was telling Aang what had happened.

"And then she said," Sokka was wrapping up. "Take a message to the Avatar for me. Tell him Lynne says – "

"Lynne?"

Sokka glared at him for interrupting. "Tell him Lynne says that she'll destroy any assassins he sends against her, and that he'd better look to the sky because she'll be striking back tenfold. And then she ikilled/i me! 'Nothing personal' my foot! She bended all of the air out of my lungs!" He continued to rant, but the Avatars were watching Kyzu.

"You tried to assassinate her?" asked Aang.

"Of course not!" Kyzu said. His mind seemed to be working on four levels at once, but he didn't have much time.

"And now I have to go be a baby again," Sokka complained. "And –"

"Stop that!" Kyzu snapped. "I need you to tell me where she is."

"You won't reach her in time," Aang said hollowly.

"Maybe not, but I have to try."


	4. Chapter 4

--Lynne—

She couldn't think. She couldn't process anything.

Lynne paced in her house in Ba Sing Se. It was too close, too small. She couldn't breathe.

Before she knew what she was doing, she swept up her staff, snapped it open, and glided up away from the city.

She breathed a sigh of relief. The wind had a calming effect, slowing down her racing heartbeat, cooling her senses. She closed her eyes and welcomed the warmth of the sun.

Her glider ripped backward, but she held on fast. It vibrated in her hands, and she started losing altitude. She looked over and cursed at her carelessness.

Two large holes had been punched through the glider's wings. She cursed again as she sank lower, and she began searching the trees. Lower, lower, she was almost brushing the highest branches of the trees. Except for the rustling leaves, everything was silent.

Lynne weaved among the trees, then settled on a branch while letting her glider continue on. She searched the ground and the other branches for any sign of her attackers.

A rock hand clamped over her mouth, another wrapped around her waist, and they pulled her out of the tree to the ground. A dozen Dai Li stepped out from the undergrowth as she struggled to her feet. The rock hands were gone from her mouth and waist, but now they bound her hands behind her.

One of the Dai Li was right in front of her. "Lynne," he said.

She glared at him. With the smallest of gestures, she started to rotate one of her fingers.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Lynne of the Air Nomads, you are under arrest for high treason against the Earth King, and-"

"Who is my informant?" she asked.

"What?"

"iWho/i is my informant?" she repeated. "Who would dare accuse me of betraying the Earth King?"

The Dai Li frowned. "Avatar Kyzu has approved your arrest, and it is our duty to protect the King. You will be tried and –"

Lynne fell to the ground, pulling the circling air above that she had been bending down with her to form a small cyclone that wavered before targeting the head Dai Li.

She rolled away as the Dai Li formed barricades against the cyclone, which she directed to pick up dead branches and rocks. One of these large rocks hurtled through the air and landed on the head Dai Li's legs. He screamed, urging her to get away faster.

Suddenly, the rocks she was climbing rose out from under her, and she fell back with a yell into the midst of the new clearing her cyclone had made. She landed near the head Dai Li, who was struggling to move the boulder.

"Nothing personal," she said. "But I need you to deliver a message for me."

"What?" asked the Dai Li. "Are you insane?"

"I need you to find Avatar Kyzu. Tell him Lynne says that she'll destroy any assassins he sends against her, and that he'd better look to the sky because she'll be striking back tenfold."

Before he could reply, she bended the air out of his lungs, and made herself watch as he gasped and waved his arms frantically. She would inot/i turn into a heartless killer. She iwould/i see the consequences of her actions through to the end. But it took all of her strength to keep from turning away.

When he was gone, she turned back to the battle just in time to dodge two rock hands being shot towards her. She took a deep breath, then bended the air out, knocking three Dai Li across the clearing as she pushed herself back.

The next few minutes were a blur in her mind as she became wholly focused on avoiding the Dai Li. She knew she took out at least two, but that still left more than she could handle. The next thing she knew, she was flying through the air and she felt her left arm snap in half. She fell against a tree, and the pain of her arm made her vision black out for a second. When it cleared, a Dai Li stood in front of her, a large rock at the ready to smash into her. Her mind froze.

Then the Dai Li erupted into flames, the rock falling onto him instead. She screamed and scrambled away, nearly screaming again when she tried to put weight on her broken arm.

The fire died away as quickly as it had come, and she could see past it to Kyzu, floating in a sphere of spinning air with glowing white eyes. With a quick wave of his hand, the entire clearing burst into flames that consumed everything within them. Lynne ducked behind a tree to escape the heat, but a distant part of her mind noted that the fire was nowhere near her.

As the shock wore off, she looked back around the tree. She had never seen an Avatar in the all powerful Avatar State before. It frightened her. But she couldn't help but stare. Kyzu was angrier than she had ever seen him.

But the fire died down, and he slowly sank to the ground. When he reached it, the globe of air disappeared, and the glow faded from his eyes, which closed and he sank to his knees.

Cautiously, Lynne crawled out from her hiding place and made her way to where Kyzu knelt in the ash. "Kyzu?" she asked, keeping her distance.

He looked up at her, and the relief was so plain on his face, it hurt to say, "If you want to kill me, get it over with. I…I can't fight you."

He got to his feet and took a step toward her. "Why would I kill you?"

"You sent the Dai Li," she said, nodding to what was left of the elite force. "You accused me of betraying the Earth King."

Kyzu waved his hand, and the rock hands finally let go of her own, falling uselessly to the ground.

"I would never do such a thing," he said, and she knew he meant it.

Which was why it hurt even more to say, "But you would go off and court this Katara girl behind my back."

He laughed, and her eyes welled with tears, but he just brushed them away. She hadn't realized how close he had gotten to her.

"It's not funny," she mumbled.

"Yes it is," he said, though he was deadly serious. "Because iyou/i are Katara."

--Kyzu—

"Well, that makes more sense than it doesn't," said Lynne.

Kyzu had just finished explaining his journey to the Spirit World, and they were sitting together against a tree. They needed to get back to Ba Sing Se and get to the bottom of the matter with the Dai Li, and fix Lynne's broken arm, but neither of them felt like disturbing the peace just yet.

"Would it be extremely cliché if I said something about fire needing air to live?" he asked.

She laughed. "Yes, and I forbid you to say anything of the sort." She leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Kyzu glanced up at their makeshift clearing of ash and rocks, then did a double take. It was all gone, all the damage, everything. Instead, there was a small spring and a pool surrounded by birch trees. Just at the water's edge was –

- Avatar Aang. Twelve year old Aang meditating with his back to the pool.

Kyzu twisted his head, and Aang disappeared. Cautiously, he moved it back, and Aang slid into place again. Then he noticed that he could see through Aang and the pool to the burned forest. It was an illusion.

Aang opened his eyes. He glanced side to side, and Kyzu could see the panic rising in him. "Katara?" he called. "KATARA!"

A huge wave swelled up from the pool and crashed onto Aang's head, and swept him across the clearing. Aang scrambled to his feet into a fighting stance, but a girl's laughter made him relax.

Kyzu looked back toward the pool. A girl, a spitting image of Lynne except for the airbending tattoos, was standing in the water, hands on hips. iAh,/i he realized. iThis must be Katara./i

"I'm surprised at you, Aang," she was saying as Aang walked back over. "Letting your guard slip like that. What if – what's wrong?"

Aang's face was such a storm of emotion Kyzu was impressed that he didn't explode. "I…I thought I'd lost you," he said. Kyzu felt a subtler version of that pull on his heart that Aang had done in the Spirit World.

Katara softened and climbed out of the pool to stand in front of him. "Don't worry," she told him. "If that ever happens, I'll find my way back to you. Promise."

Aang nodded somberly, but the split-second mischievous grin he gave Katara wasn't enough warning. A pillar of rock rose from the ground and pushed Katara back into the pool. Then he jumped in, and they started having a mock waterbending fight.

Kyzu smiled to himself and watched his and Lynne's past lives until the vision faded in the dying light.


End file.
